A SLIP of the tongue caused Newstalk radio presenter Chris Donoghue to accidentally blurt an expletive live on air.

Donoghue, who co-presents the breakfast programme on Newstalk 106-108 from 7.00am to 10.00am on weekday mornings, made the mistake by "mashing" two words - 'cuts' and 'grants' together.

The broadcaster ended up uttering the c-word that rhymes with hunt.

After he finished the early monrning show, the young presenter took to Twitter to explain what happened.

"Hairy morning. Mashed 'cuts' & 'grants' together to say a word on air that should get me fired," he tweeted this morning.

However, the utterance did not cause any uproar at the national station.

A member of Donoghue's production team confirmed to the Irish Independent that the incident had not been discussed.

Listeners, too, did not appear to take issue with the mistake, as Donoghue tweeted: "The nation seems to have laughed".

Chris is the latest in a long line of broadcasters who have made similar bloopers on air.

In November 2010, BBC presenter James Naughtie tripped over his words while announcing an interview with Jeremy Hunt, UK culture secretary.

Similarly to Chris, he uttered the ‘c***’ word on Radio 4’s Today programme.

He then giggled his way through the news headlines, before later apologising: "I am very sorry to anybody who thought it wasn't what they wanted to hear over breakfast. Needless to say, neither did I."

Presenting his radio programme on Radio Four later that day, Naughtie's colleague Andrew Marr made a joke about the blooper, only to repeat the same word himself.

RTE’s soccer commentator George Hamilton once explained verbal blunders are an occupational hazard for anyone contemplating a life in broadcasting.

"I remember once presenting Sports Stadium on RTE and talking about a pair of golfers "going after their balls" and the whole studio went into paroxysms of laughter.''

"There were two well-known golfers called Neil Coles and Bernard Hunt, and commentators were prone to mixing them up," said Hamilton said in a previous interview with the Irish Independent.

George once got very worked up during an international match in the 1980s and remarked of a substitution: "He's pulling him off! The Spanish manager is pulling his captain off!"

In a similar vein, Jimmy Magee told viewers: "Brady's been playing inside Platini's shorts all night."

In the US, CNN newscaster Kyra Phillips could have seen her career flushed down the pan, when the station beamed a speech by President George Bush on an anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Phillips kept her clip-on microphone on when she nipped out to the toilet. All of a a sudden, as George Bush attempted to apologise for the government's response to the hurricane, viewers were treated to the sound of the newscaster in the loo, having a right old gossip about her family with a friend, amid the sounds of flushing water, she even described her sister-in-law as a "control freak''.

At the BBC News Channel, newsreader Peter Sissons was caught out when he did not realise a camera was on him as a clip of the Weakest Link presenter Anne Robinson was shown. Live on air he remarked, somewhat ungallantly: "That's not Anne Robinson, is it? Jesus Christ! She's even got new t***!"